


How To Live

by virdant



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-23
Updated: 2011-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 16:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When Mycroft is seven, Mummy places a tiny bundle in his arms and says, “This is Sherlock. You’ll have to be a good role model for him.”<br/>...<br/>Mycroft swears, at that moment, never to lead his younger brother wrong.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Live

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Trell](http://selkath.livejournal.com) and [Pann](http://pannytheangel.deviantart.com) for looking over the fic. Special thanks to [Rei](http://reiicharu.livejournal.com) for offering _three_ title suggestions on cue (without even reading the fic!) and more thanks to Pann for taking my incoherent ramblings on what I want the title to reflect and coming up with the current one. :)

Mycroft keeps his face still. In the face of yet another one of Sherlock’s temper tantrums, it’s hard to do so.

“You have to listen to Mummy, Sherlock.”

“I don’t want to!” He stomps his foot, the shoe splattered with red paint. Painting is the latest venture that Mycroft has suggested to channel Sherlock’s unending curiosity, but instead of staying within the boundaries of the canvas, Sherlock has covered the entire room red. “Why do I have to listen to her? What does she know? She isn’t as smart as us! Nobody’s as smart as us.”

And that’s the problem, Mycroft thinks. Because Sherlock is right.

*

Sherlock changes everything.

Before Sherlock, Mycroft doesn’t trust anybody to define rules for him. “ _Why?_ ” is his favorite question. Mummy orders, “Don’t eat sweets before dinner,” and he asks, “Why?” “Wash your hands,” meets a curious, “Why?” “Go out and play,” receives, “Why? Why can’t I stay in the library and read?”

Mummy never says, “Because I say so.” She matches questions with more questions, pushing Mycroft to bury himself in the library with heavy tomes until Father comes.

“Books don’t always tell the truth,” Father warns him. “You’ll have to observe the world to confirm everything you read.”

Mycroft doesn’t ask why. He knows how easy it is for him to lie already, and he doesn’t even get caught. It can’t possibly be harder to do so in writing, without the expressive muscles in the face to give away the truth.

Mycroft lies through two entire years. He pastes a polite smile on his face while eating his vegetables and doing his homework, stays within the careful boundaries of home and then elementary school, pretending to listen to adults.

When Mycroft is seven, Mummy places a tiny bundle in his arms and says, “This is Sherlock. You’ll have to be a good role model for him.”

Mycroft stares at those eyes and doesn’t ask why. Instead, he studies Sherlock carefully.

Sherlock squirms and blinks back.

Mycroft can’t find it in himself to pretend any longer.

*

Mycroft despairs over ever getting Sherlock to _listen_ to authority. The most he can get Sherlock to admit to is that Mummy is not someone to upset.

“I don’t upset her,” Sherlock finally says when he’s about to go to university.

Mycroft smiles and says, “No, you don’t.”

Sherlock is smug for one second.

Mycroft continues, “But you could. Easily.”

*

Everything is easy for Sherlock.

Except violin.

Sherlock hates violin. Every note he makes is a screech, sharp and painful. Mummy jokes that he’s serenading the cats outdoors, and Mycroft can’t help but point out that it’s more akin to nails dragging down a chalkboard.

Sherlock _loves_ it. It’s the first thing that’s ever held his attention for more than an hour, and his six-year-old mind is delighted. He spends hours practicing, he attends his lessons without complaint, and he _listens_ to his instructor. When his instructor takes away his bow until he can hold his violin under his chin without his hands for an entire minute, he doesn’t even complain.

He learns slowly, because his mind is limited by his body. It’s hard, and Mycroft sleeps with a pillow clamped over his head for years while Sherlock’s violin screeches.

Finally, when Sherlock has been learning the violin for three years and is almost ten, he holds his bow carelessly by the frog and says, without looking at Mycroft, “Maybe you were right.”

Mycroft plays a careful arpeggio on the piano. “About what?”

“Other people knowing things I don’t.”

Mycroft smiles and says, “Books don’t always tell the truth. They aren’t a substitute for the real world.”

Sherlock huffs and draws his bow across the strings. Carefully, gently, and a clear A rings out.

Mycroft plays a D-minor chord, and listens to Sherlock tuning. Sherlock bows steadily, tuning the rest of his strings to A, and Mycroft feels a sudden thrill at the fact that Sherlock’s intonation depends entirely on him.

He can throw the entire song into another key. Sherlock may or may not notice. His sense of pitch is still relative, and he hasn’t learned to hold an A in his head yet. There’s a long way to go before Sherlock will be independent.

Mycroft swears, at that moment, never to lead his younger brother wrong.

*

Father dies when Sherlock is young. Mycroft files away everything Father taught him and makes notes to tell Sherlock when he’s the same age. It’s the least that Mycroft can do.

But Sherlock slams his hands over his ears and screams, “I’m not listening! I’m not listening!” whenever Mycroft tries. “You aren’t Father so stop trying!” hurts the most.

When Sherlock screams at him, stomps his feet and clenches his fists, it’s all Mycroft can do to not hit him. But Mummy said, _You’ll have to be a good role model_ , and Father isn’t around anymore to teach Sherlock what he needs to know. There’s only Mycroft left.

Mycroft reaches for Sherlock, slowly and carefully. He wraps his hands around Sherlock’s slender wrists, brings his arms down, and suggests Sherlock take up martial arts to get rid of all of his energy.

The instructors tell Mycroft that Sherlock doesn’t listen to instruction. That he’s out of control, that he needs to learn discipline. They tell him not to send Sherlock back until he’s older and more in control of himself. They tell him that if he doesn’t learn to follow the rules, he’ll hurt himself.

“Why?” Mycroft asks Sherlock as they stand in the garden, Sherlock’s hands clenched into fists as he attacks Mycroft. Mycroft doesn’t try to defend himself—he has years of muscle mass to protect him.

“They’re all so stupid!” Sherlock shouts back. “They don’t know anything! They tell me to _stop_ , when it makes more sense to keep the other person from ever hurting me again.” He stops flailing and stands stiffly, chest heaving with exertion.

Mycroft reaches for Sherlock again, and this time Sherlock lets him. “Rules are there for a reason,” he says. “If you just observe…”

“I don’t _care_ about the rules! The people who made them were idiots!”

*

Before Father died, Sherlock was easier to manage. He listened when Father told him what to do, said that he loved Mummy, and kissed her on the cheek. Mummy was always pleased, and Father spent hours on his research with Sherlock sitting beside him, watching with wide eyes.

Mycroft pinched Sherlock’s arm every time he turned those wide innocent eyes on him. “Stop pretending,” he hissed.

Sherlock smiled back and whispered through the gap where his milk teeth were falling out, “But Mycroft,” his entire face a distortion of innocence, “why?”

*

“Because I told you to,” is the worst thing that anybody can say to Sherlock.

Mycroft picks up Sherlock from elementary school. “Why don’t you listen to your teachers?”

“They’re stupid.” Sherlock kicks his feet.

Mycroft agrees, but he can’t say that. Sherlock barely goes to school as is. It’s only the promise that he’ll learn something from people older and wiser than him that keeps him in class.

“We’re smarter,” Sherlock says suddenly. “Why do we have to listen to people who are stupider than us? Why are the people in charge so stupid?”

“Because,” Mycroft says simply, “all the smart ones realized how stupid it is to be in the public eye.”

Sherlock snorts. “I’ll make the whole world notice me.” He stares up at the sky. “I’ll make them _listen_ to me.”

Mycroft looks up, trying to see what Sherlock’s seeing. Mycroft sees a mass of wordless people, incapable of intelligent thought, mindlessly obeying Sherlock’s every whim.

Sherlock turns to Mycroft, his eyes bright. “I’m smarter than them,” he declares.

“Yes,” Mycroft agrees. _And I’m smarter than you._

*

When Sherlock is three, his favorite word is _boring_.

“Boring!” he shouts when Mycroft sets a coloring book down in front of him. He then proceeds to cover the pages with scribbles of color in a facsimile of an impressionist painting.

It’s impressive. It isn’t what Sherlock is supposed to be doing.

“That’s just listening to other people.” Sherlock doesn’t even flinch when Mycroft glares at him. “That’s boring.”

“Sometimes,” Mycroft says, “you have to.”

Sherlock scowls. “Why?” he asks. _Why_ is his second-favorite word.

Mycroft wonders how to explain this to a boy who’s only three when he’s only ten. How to explain that without rules, society falls down. How to explain that laws often don’t make sense, but you have to follow them because otherwise the only option is chaos.

So instead, he says, “Imagine a world where anybody could do anything they wanted. And that included hurting Mummy.”

*

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Mycroft points out decades later. Sherlock looks tired, like he’s been running around Europe for the past few months. He has, but that isn’t the point. “Is Moriarty also alive?”

Sherlock glares. “No. I need money,” he snaps.

Mycroft smiles, faintly. “Of course you do. Taking down Moriarty’s entire organization can’t be cheap.”

“Are you going to give me the money or not?”

It isn’t everyday that your younger brother comes back to life. It isn’t everyday that _Sherlock_ comes to him for help. “Of course,” he says stiffly.

Sherlock snorts.

An hour later, as Sherlock’s leaving with the cash, Mycroft says, “Wait.”

Sherlock glares, but stops.

Mycroft stands perfectly straight, umbrella at his side. “Be safe,” he says. “Mummy would want that.”

And Sherlock turns and promises, “I’ll be back when I’ve finished putting the world in order.”

*

When Mycroft hears of Jim Moriarty, he thinks of Sherlock butchering Mozart. He thinks of Sherlock covering the floor with buckets of paint. He thinks of Sherlock tackling another boy and pummeling him _because I can, because I’m better than you_.

He thinks of holding Sherlock’s wrists and whispering, “You can’t just throw a tantrum whenever you feel like it. The world has _rules_.”

“The world,” Sherlock replies, “is stupid. Full of stupid people that are ruled by other stupid people.”

“That doesn’t mean that you can break the rules.” Mycroft remembers saying. He remembers talking about how Mummy would be upset, remembers trying to explain what happens when things go terribly wrong. Finally, he remembers taking a beaker of diluted acid from Sherlock’s chemistry set, setting it down on a table, and then dropping a pebble into it.

The acid splashed up, scattering droplets all over Sherlock’s work. “What are you doing?” Sherlock screeched.

“Breaking the rules,” Mycroft replied, staring at his brother behind the safety glasses. “Don’t, Sherlock. Don’t try to break the lines that the world has set for us.” He gestured to the table. “Stay within the lines.”

And after years of persuasion, Sherlock does.

But Jim Moriarty is different. Jim Moriarty paints the world red and shouts: _where are you carefully defined lines now?_

And that is the problem.

 

End.


End file.
